movies. tv. music. interwebs. whatever.

what’s in a name anyways

Been a while since I ever ‘blogged’ about anything. The itch has been there for a while and thought ‘what better way to start off a new year than to do what one has been wanting to do for some time’.

For my first post, I thought I’d offer some insights into the name of this blog. Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised by the title, but for those of you who don’t…

The first part is taken from what I believe to be the ‘Citizen Kane of Steve Guttenberg films’, Short Circuit (1986). Okay, so maybe mentioning Short Circuit in the same sentence as Citizen Kane is a sin, but we are talking about Steve Guttenberg after all. This film holds a special place in my childhood. It’s one of the first films I ever remember being totally mesmerized with. There’s a talking robot in it and the sequel features a kickass sequence to “I Need a Hero” (See YouTube clip below, do it now)!

Besides the fact that this film had clearly made a considerable impression on what grew to a lifelong fascination with artificial intelligence, science-fiction, 80s movies and the like, to name my brand spanking new pop culture blog after a film that features a character that speaks nothing but pop culture gab was perfect! However, shortcircuits.wordpress.com was already taken…

So, my interest in geeky cultural/psychoanalytical theory got the better of me and I decided to bookend my title with reference to a concept that spoke to much of my interests in school. ‘The Real’ is a concept that I don’t have any real interest in explicitly exploring here, but I think it will permeate my online ramblings as an inevitability. My use of ‘the Real’ in the title is to simply evoke what I see as a conceptual thread for more and hopefully, consistent posts to come. My adoption of this concept stems more directly from the work of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek and their musings on the growing complexities of distinguishing what we believe to be ‘reality’ from ‘illusion’ or the inability to distinguish one from the other. Oh who am I kidding, it adds a bit of snap to a blog name doesn’t it!

This won’t be an academic or theory-heavy blog (at least I don’t think it will be), but a place that I hope to share some thoughtful and fun commentary on this crazy and often entertaining world we live in. Enjoy!